600 miles, 10 hours.

It rained all night and into the morning. I watched the Weather Channel- Hurricane Ike was supposed to pass through the area by noon, so I waited to leave until 10am. Most of the rain had passed, but I had two fairly wet stretches.

I tend to measure ride lengths in "stretches", because I prefer to not stop every 10 minutes. So a "stretch" is an hour or half a gastank- in other words, somewhere between 60 and 100 miles. In other words, out of 600 miles, I had to wear rain gear and ride through rain for about 150 miles.

There was a lot of standing water and signs of the 10 inches of rain that had fallen overnight. Fields were flooded and rivers were over their banks- enough that one interstate bridge was only about a foot above the rough river that was below it. One of the other signs of the rain were the spun-out vehicles; I saw at least four cars that had spun and were in the median. They were all totaled, some were fairly wadded.

As the day went on, the roads and skies became dry, then turned into completely cloudless blue skies by the end of the day. I got to watch the sunset and moonrise over western Kansas- the stark contrast between the Plains and the cloudless sunset was just incredible. It was certainly a lasting memory and something that wouldn't be the same without that terrain.

I ended the day 15 miles from the Colorado border in a campground. Western Kansas is theoretically flat, but is actually a "tilted table". In other words, the ground is flat but not level. In 285 miles, the road rose 2600 feet. That is 9 feet per mile, or the same as putting five sheets of paper under one end of your couch. It's certainly imperceptible, and the gains are very even- you don't ride over hills or through passes to gain elevation.